Re: [Caml-list] opam and godi

[Yaron Minsky <yminsky@janestreet.com>]

While I appreciate the work that Gerd has done on GODI, I do think
that OPAM is a significant improvement over GODI.

From an end-user-experience perspective, I've found OPAM to be
considerably smoother than GODI.  In addition to having what I
consider to be a better user interface, upgrading of packages in OPAM
has been very smooth overall.  I found upgrades in GODI to be pretty
tricky, with many upgrades ending in failure for one reason or
another.  I suspect this has something to do with the system for
handling of dependencies in OPAM, which has taken quite a bit of work
to get right from what I understand.

In addition, the ability to easily handle multiple compilers in OPAM
is also a big win, from my perspective.  I think it makes it much
easier to try out and give feedback on upcoming compiler versions,
which is good for the community as a whole.  (Plus, trying out
bleeding-edge compiler patches is fun...)

With the arrival of OPAM, for the first time I feel good about
recommending that new users try out libraries with significant
dependencies like Core, since installing such libraries is now really
quite simple.

y

On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org> wrote:
> On 21 Jul 2013, at 14:54, "Gerd Stolpmann" <info@gerd-stolpmann.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>> could someone explain please the relation between godi and opam ? Is it
>>> concurrent ?
>>> Godi has been there for some time, and works quite nicely. So what are
>>> differences ?
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> both are independent projects. OPAM is a younger project, and I don't
>> really know what the motivation behind it is (in addition to the generic
>> motication to hack something). There were initially claims to make it is
>> easier to package software up, but what I've seen is actually not much
>> different from GODI (actually even worse now that GODI allows it to fully
>> automate package releases).
>
> The answer's right there on the front page:
>
> "OPAM is a source-based package manager for OCaml. It supports multiple
> simultaneous compiler installations, flexible package constraints, and a
> Git-friendly development workflow."
>
>> The feature sets are not the same, and some stuff works better in OPAM and
>> some in GODI. As I'm advocating the latter, let me point out some features
>> where I think GODI is better:
>
> Feature minutiae aside, I'd say the biggest benefit of OPAM is the more
> open development workflow. It's easier for people to maintain their
> own branches and contribute changes to the central repository.
>
> Let's look at the stable repository "pulse":
> https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam-repository/pulse/monthly
>
> It tells us that in the last month, there have been 30 authors that have
> pushed 167 package updates. These have all come in as pull requests that
> can still be browsed.  For example, see the latest Core from Jane Street:
> https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam-repository/pulls?state=closed
>
> Several development groups also maintain their own remotes without any
> need to depend on the central repository. For example, see Citrix's:
> https://github.com/xapi-project/opam-repo-dev/tree/master/packages
>
> As Gerd points out, GODI is an older and more mature project. I find
> OPAM more useful for my own personal development workflow though. You
> should try both out and see which one you prefer.
>
> cheers,
> Anil
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs